Teak Chair Plans

[Mike Congiusti]

Hi,

I was looking at buying some teak chairs for my lanai as I bought a teak table 4 years ago and after seeing the prices, I thought about building some. They looked pretty straight forward, no real curves. I tried looking for plans with a material list but all I found were places to buy them. I even checked Norm's site as I knew he built some chairs. Can anyone steer me to some plans or have them? The next hard part will be to find a source that has teak. BTW, the price was $549 each.


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[Jamie Buxton]

Price teak lumber. The last time I bought some it was over $40 per board foot.

[Tom Bender]

Chairs are much more challenging than tables. If you're concerned about curves you may not be ready to start milling Teak. Pick up some pine and make a prototype. Work out the joinery and dimensions. Then get some rough teenagers to test and age it. Then step up to Walnut for your second prototype. That's what I'd do and I've made a few types of chairs. Don't be impatient, enjoy the journey.

[Mike Congiusti]

Tom,

Thanks for the advice. I'm building a chair from 2 X 6 wood from home depot. The lower part is easy. Tomorrow I plan to make the back and slats. I used domino's for the legs and it's beyond strong. I need to make sure the angle is OK. I'm going to starts with 15 degrees. I had some African teak from another project and after using the sealer on it the color was an excellent match. They have it for $8.15 a bdft. Right now they only have 4/4. I need 6/4 and 8/4. Hopfully they will have it when I'm ready.

[Sean Nagle]

A couple years ago I purchased a dining set for my covered deck. I considered building the table and chairs myself, but the price of teak was prohibitive. I ended up purchasing from this company.

https://www.countrycasualteak.com/

The quality of the teak was very good. The design of the table was OK. However, the chairs were very well constructed and solid. It would have cost me as much to purchase the teak as the finished product.

[Richard Coers]

Simple with no curves means UNCOMFORTABLE to me.

[Mike Henderson]

Many countries where teak grows put a high export duty on raw wood. Things made from the wood did not have that high duty. For a short while, I could buy teak flooring (solid teak, not laminated) for a decent price. But the countries apparently caught on and I can't find low cost teak flooring any more.

Of course, the countries did that to encourage employment in their country instead of letting other countries build the finished product.

Mike

[Jim Barstow]

I just went through sort of the same thing. We needed new outdoor furniture and ended up buying an entire teak set. The price of raw teak was astronomical and limited in size availability. As we discovered when we put down our deck, wood names are deceiving; ipe was in short supply so we used “cumaru”, billed as the same as ipe. Nope. I’d be careful that “African teak” has the same outdoor-friendly properties as real teak.

As to building chairs, I’ve built several different styles but I can’t imagine building a set. Since I don’t make a living at it, I like more variation in my work. Building 6-8 dining-style chairs would be tedious. As mentioned previously, a chair with mostly right angles sounds uncomfortable. My dining chair didn’t have a right angle in it. Talk about fussy work. Fun for 1. Not fun for 6.

[Mike Henderson]

As to building chairs, I’ve built several different styles but I can’t imagine building a set. Since I don’t make a living at it, I like more variation in my work. Building 6-8 dining-style chairs would be tedious. As mentioned previously, a chair with mostly right angles sounds uncomfortable. My dining chair didn’t have a right angle in it. Talk about fussy work. Fun for 1. Not fun for 6.

You may have heard the woodworking joke about the woodworker who had a dining room chair in a show. A woman came to him and wanted to know how much it was.

"$500", he replied.

"I'll take six of them", she said. "How much would that be?"

He thought for a minute and replied, "$6,000".

She was taken aback and said, "One chair is $500 but six of them are $6,000?"

He smiled, "Building the first one was fun."

Mike